Seeing Cormac McCarthy’s The Road at the top of the list for Entertainment Weekly’s The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008 fascinates me. The 2006 book deserves all of the praise and attention it’s received since publication. Even Oprah Winfrey got it right for once when she ordered her minions to read The Road for her book club.

The Road tells the story of a father and son as they wander through an ash covered, post-apocalyptic America. McCarthy’s 2005 book No Country for Old Men – known better as a Coen brothers movie than a McCarthy novel – reads in hindsight like an appetizer for The Road. In the former book, McCarthy slowly dissects the American Dream and reveals the unpleasant possibility that it’s coming to an end, whereas in the latter book, he destroys America and shows us the possibility of what comes next. And what does come next? Well, a lot of despair, darkness and pain. Make no mistake about it, The Road is bleak; which is just fine for McCarthy, a writer who is notorious for never quite giving readers what they expect and want. For instance, outside of a “long shear of light and then a series of low concussions”, it is not clear in the book what caused the devastation. But really, it isn’t important what really happened – this is a journey story, one of survival.

More importantly, The Road is part of an interesting 21st century trend towards end of the world stories. (more…)

Blast of Silence is a 1961 noir film starring Allen Baron, who also wrote and directed. Baron plays Frankie Bono, a professional hitman, who arrives in New York City to kill a mobster during the Christmas holiday. Solitary and meticulous, Frankie patiently waits for the opportune moment to fulfill his contract; however, a random encounter with an old friend leads him to consider the possibility of a normal life and ends up jeopardizing everything Frankie has achieved.

To call Blast of Silence a crime film would be a disservice to the story. This is a 77 minute existential crisis, a psychologically claustrophobic nightmare, as fatalistic as they come, and the best you can hope for as the viewer who might side with Frankie Bono is that when the hammer falls, it’s quick and painless. And make no mistake about it, the hammer is going to fall on Frankie; only what makes Blast of Silence so interesting is that he isn’t being punished for being a killer, but for allowing himself to feel human. This is, after all, the beginning of the Sixties when the American post-war high was finally crashing down hard, and the idea of the American dream was losing some of its appeal. So when Frankie comes around and decides he finally wants his cut of the dream, it’s no wonder he gets what he gets. Sorry, Frankie, wrong decade, wrong genre. (more…)